MiDES Summary Report and Data Definitions

This annual summary report provides headline findings from this year's MiDES Retention Report and Curriculum Profile Report. The report includes an overview of your college's performance and profile in comparison to all other AoC member colleges in the benchmark.

The report focuses on the in-year retention of classroom learners (all ages) enrolled on long courses between September (last year) and April (current year) and the profile of learner volumes by subject area at your college to the national benchmark.

More detailed data definitions used within the Retention and Curriculum Profile summary are presented below.

In Year Retention Report

This report enables you to compare retention trends in your own institution with the national picture and other selected comparator groups. You can carry out analysis by learner characteristic (such as gender, ethnicity and learning difficulty or disability) or by sector subject area and level of study.

In-Year retention has been calculated as completers plus continuers divided by all enrolments minus those who transferred. The enrolments which are included in the analysis are filtered by (Definition B):

Learners aged 16+ and on Skills Funding Agency or EFA funded courses.

Classroom Based Learning (including learners with an Advanced Learner Loan)

Courses which are expected to be 24 weeks or longer.

Enrolments which were active during the month of September but not finishing before the end of the month.

All enrolments which withdrew in the first six weeks of the course have been removed.

Curriculum Profile Report

This report enables you to compare the curriculum profile in your own institution with the national picture and other selected comparator groups. You can carry out analysis by the number or percentage of enrolments or learners for each subject by level and learner characteristic. The report includes the following learners:

Learners on Classroom Based Learning or an Apprenticeship.

Learners with an Advanced Learner Loan.

Learners aged 16+.

About MiDES

MiDES (Market Intelligence Data Exchange Service) is a shared service that has been developed jointly by RCU and the Association of Colleges (AoC). The service started in February 2011 and is available to all AoC members.

The idea behind MiDES is simple. Participating colleges upload their learner data to the secure MiDES data server creating a new MiDES sector-owned shared dataset. This dataset is linked to other information sources such as the Indices of Deprivation, creating a hugely powerful ‘data mining’ resource for members.

MiDES is a voluntary data exchange service between members and therefore does not provide 100% comprehensive information on learners in the current academic year (some providers are not part of AoC and some AoC members will not have submitted ILRs to MiDES). Nevertheless, with over three-quarters of AoC members submitting data it does provide a powerful insight within the current academic year.